In This House

“Howard Altmann interrogates the sky, the light, the world, about their intentions. If he seldom finds reassuring answers, he finds something better: "When all that consoled consoles no longer/ loneliness finds a room inside the one it knows." These poems are as essential as a glass of water.” — John Ashbery

“Though not exactly a nature poet, Howard Altmann is a poet of his own mysterious natural kingdom, a house in which he has built a house, whose walls are open to the inspiration of air. ("Frightened of the next life/ being exactly like this life/ he asked to be a bird" or "Let it not be words/ you reach for you say -- / where the trees stand/ far from man.") To have discovered this kingdom and inhabited it (like Keats' Imagination, as monk to monastery) -- to have found words for what is nearly unsayable -- is a measure of this poet's uncanny transformational gift. Enter the house of these poems and stay on, a grateful tenant in this remarkable state of wonder.” — Carol Muske-Dukes